Conventionally, attention has been paid to internal body fat content of a person in view of health maintenance. In other words, since a rise in internal body fat content of a person may increase a risk for the person to get so called adult diseases, monitoring the internal body fat content of the person may prevent the adult diseases. BMI has been widely used as an index to evaluate the internal body fat content since it can be easily calculated from height and weight of an individual person.
Another useful index to evaluate the internal body fat content of a person is a body fat ratio. Recently, various types of body fat meters capable of measuring the body fat ratio are available on the market, and, with these body fat meters, the body fat ratio can be easily measured at home.
Among the internal body fat, the visceral fat has been believed to be a factor particularly contributing to various complications of arteriosclerosis, diabetes, and etc. For this reason, the visceral fat content has been becoming an important factor in view of health maintenance.
The BMI and the body fat ratio described above are information obtained as average data on internal body fat content in the whole body. Hence, even if the result of the BMI or the body fat ratio does not indicate any health problem, it does not necessarily mean that there is no health problem in relation with the visceral fat content.
Information on the visceral fat can be obtained through a diagnosing method such as abdominal tomography by means of CT scanning, MRI, and etc. This method allows directly observing the abdominal portion itself, thereby making it possible to accurately obtain information on the visceral fat.
Such a method, however, is problematic in that the procedure requires a large scale apparatus installed in a major hospital, a certain length of time necessary for measurement and data analysis, and highly specific technical knowledge for the operation and data analysis. Hence, the method is not suitable for use at home to obtain the visceral fat content.
It is, therefore, the object of the present invention to provide a visceral fat determining device that can be easily used at home or the like for obtaining information on the visceral fat.